BTCC Croft: Sutton leads all Subaru front-row ahead of Plato

Reigning British Touring Car champion Ashley Sutton has secured his first pole position of the season ahead of Jason Plato as Subaru make a triumphant return to form in qualifying at Croft.

Reigning British Touring Car champion Ashley Sutton has secured his first pole position of the season ahead of Jason Plato as Subaru make a triumphant return to form in qualifying at Croft.

Despite entering the year as the reigning drivers' title holders, the BMR Subaru outfit have suffered an indifferent start to the 2018 campaign so far. However, Sutton and Plato have subsequently hit back with tremendous effect after locking-out the front-row around the North Yorkshire circuit.

At the scene of where Sutton clinched his maiden BTCC win with MG in 2016, the Subaru Levorg GT driver led the timesheets for the vast majority of the 30-minute shootout.

Despite having a number of his attempts scuppered by traffic, Sutton ultimately took pole ahead of Plato after producing a 1 minute 24.222s lap

Plato rose up to second during his second sequence of runs, just 0.017s quicker than the leading BMW effort of Andrew Jordan in third position.

Motorbase Performance's Sam Tordoff was the best of the non-RWD challengers in fourth, just over 0.2s shy of Sutton's pole time.

Following what turned to out to be a fierce battle for the fifth fastest time, Speedworks Motorsport's Tom Ingram ultimately prevailed for a top-five starting slot ahead of Team BMW's Colin Turkington, who was carrying 75 kilos of success ballast as the championship leader in sixth.

Rob Collard followed his Team BMW team mate in seventh, while Stephen Jelley, Josh Cook and Rob Austin completed the remainder of the top-ten positions in eighth, ninth and tenth.